Eclectic, exciting Dianne Reeves

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, May 5, 1999

IT WAS with some amusement and considerable sympathy that I recently read an article that attempted to define just what category singer Dianne Reeves should be placed.

Is she a jazz singer? Perhaps, depending on your definition of jazz. A scat singer, or rapper? Hardly, one might say, but, then again, she often does narrate her story-song lyrics with a strong rhythmic backup. A soul-singer, an R&B finger-snapping shouter - or perhaps a pop-ballad stylist?

She, of course, is all of the above - and a lot more.

Reeves and her knockout Latin-tinged accompanying quintet opened a six-day engagement at Yoshi's on Tuesday and, as anticipated, combined all kinds of styles (and songs) during the course of a 90-minute first set.

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After the band, featuring Peruvian guitarist Ramon Stagnaro and Venezualian multi-keyboardist Otmaro Ruiz, blew away the audience with a lively samba-beat overture, Reeves - looking lovely, immaculately dressed - let us know she was "feelin' good" (cheers from the crowd) and then, in a sing-song style, informed us that we'd hear old and new numbers.

And we certainly did. These days, as indicated on her new Blue Note CD, Reeves is settled into story-telling material, with the blank-verse lyrics delivered in short, staccato phrases over the beat of jazz drums (Rocky Bryant), Latin percussion (Munyungo Jackson) and the bass, both acoustic and electric, of Reginald Veal.

She often creates melodic lines as she leaps about vocally, yet, on something like "Yesterdays," she regularly returns to Jerome Kern's melody and makes frequent reference to Otto Harbach's lyrics. On Patsy Moore's "I Remember" (from the new CD), Reeves emotes the poignant lyrics as if she were leaping from rock-to-rock while crossing a river, delivering the lines over her band's flowing sounds.

"Can't you see the wonders of the universe?" one lyric line of "Mista" asks; Reeves delivers that number as a vocal gymnast, swirling and swooping her voice through three octaves - a touch, there, of Betty Carter's style. She sang Joni Mitchell's "When Morning Comes" perched on a stool, meandering vocally through the delicate melody; when the song is her own, new, "Testify," written with Jackson, Reeves moves about the stage, exhorting her listeners to join in on the repeated "I just want to testify" lines.

On Mitchell's "River," included in the new CD, Reeves has some fun with such lines as "He loved me so naughty, made me weak in the knees."

Reeves talks through a lot of entr'acte time, often philosophizing about love, family, traditions, religious faith. On "Mista" (her lyrics, Terri Lyne Carrington's music) Reeves takes an optimistic look ahead, singing, "A world full of miracles help me to realize; I got the power, I've got the knowledge. Each day's a new chance to better tomorrow."

Following a walk-off, Reeves returned to reminisce at length about her mother, grandmother, and Mother's Day, on the afternoon of which, this Sunday, she will present a special family concert at Yoshi's (510) 238-9200. &lt;